Wiiiiiiiii ... Wait .... What? ..... Ohhhhh

updated: 11/12/12

Hey Wii Hacks community. Thanks for being here. My name's Chris. I'm a new Wii owner (actually a previously owned console) and am very excited over the potential of this little white box. I'm talking loosing sleep over the idea of how cool it would be to get everything running smoothly and how the Wii could actually be the console I've always wanted. My highlight of Wii ownership so far: I live in Colorado with Fam/Friends accross the country and playing Mario Kart over WFC while Skyping has been seriously awesome fun.

From day 1 I hit Google, YouTube (failtube as I've seen it called), and all sorts of guides, tutorials, etc attempting to get my setup perfected, at least in my mind. What I quickly found is that Wii hacking is a crazy widespread topic of discussion and the pitfalls, wrong turns, missed steps, or outdated info is pretty darn overwhelming.

I think I'd be much better off limiting my input and resources to an All-in-one shop like the Wii Hacks community. The tutorials and discussions I've landed on by chance have always been some of the most thorough and up-to-date. After softmodding an original Xbox for XBMC, jailbreaking iDevices, and recently adding Optware to a Pogoplug, I'm ready to whip this Wii into shape and make it amazing like my other gadgets and gizmos. I think I'm pretty savvy about following technical tutorials, moving, extracting, installing, and everything in between. My real challenge has been finding the sources to follow.

Thank you for becoming a member of the best wii modding site around!
First off you need to read the Site rules and try your best to abide by them.
Also You need to realise that this site is here to help you make the most out of your Wii and not to help people with piracy!
Now we know the rules its time to find the right guide for modding your wii, I recommend the

Once you have completed the guide you need to ascertain if your wii is capable of playing backups via the disc drive or whether you need to be usb loading.
Wii's post 2009 generally cannot play backups via the disc drive and have to use usb loading.
I recommend usb loading anyway as you can add an remove your games easily and there is no wear and tear on your disc drive and no messing about with discs etc.
What you will need to know -
What drives are compatible - Usb Compatibility list
How to set your drive up - Loading and Playing Wii Backup Games from USB HDD

Once your HDD is setup and ready to go, you will need a program to manage your games!
Checkout Peire's Wii Game Manager Guide

Now your set up and ready to go, but you run in to a problem with one of your game backups -